Author: Lawrence O'Donnell
Rating: 5 Stars
Review By: Shana

There are books that you must work your way through, those you think you should read because they talk about something important and require a serious outlay of effort. O'Donnell has written a book that manages that wonderful alchemy of being a serious piece of historic and political research on an important time period that is a compelling read. His writing propels the story forward and it never feels like work as the pages fly by.

Author: Luke Harding
Rating: 3 Stars
Review By: Shana

Solid journalistic recounting of Edward Snowden's exposure of extralegal surveillance by the NSA. The book reads well and offers some perspective that was not possible to get in real time as one headline after another assaulted the world. While the author sometimes seems a bit dramatic (which can color the objectivity of certain passages), overall the facts and events are recounted with a fair amount of balance. 

Author: John Markoff
Rating: 4 Stars
Review By: Shana

This is a thorough and thoughtfully written history of the sometimes-at-odds scientific pursuits of AI (artificial intelligence) and IA (intelligence augmentation). Markoff does an admirable job of giving enough detail and technical information to truly explain the scientific developments, but not so much as to make a lay reader feel overwhelmed. He has interwoven the technical feats with the biographies and personalities of the key players, as well as the dueling philosophies at the heart of how we currently interact with automated and robotic technology, how we should do so in the future, and the attendant dangers.

Author: Luke Harding​
Rating: 4 Stars
Review By: Shana

​This 2016 book, unfortunately, remains all too relevant and has a ripped from the headlines feel. Harding not only recounts (with all materials available at the time of printing) the events that lead up to the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in particular, but more generally looks at the events that have shaped Russia under Vladimir Putin. This includes a truncated explanation of the fall of the USSR and the birth of Russia, how the assets that used to belong to the state were divvied up among the Oligarchs, the failure of any nascent democracy in Russia, Putin's improbable rise and eventual consolidation of power, and workings and tenor of present-day Russia under Putin. 

Author: Barbara Demick
Rating: 5 Stars
Review by Shana

A window into North Korea that is poignant, tragic, infuriating, and heartbreaking in turns. Through interviews with a handful of North Koreans who have defected and live in South Korea, along with Demick's tenure covering events in Asia for the LA Times, the book lets the reader glimpse life in North Korea: the crippled economy and chronic food shortages, the tightly controlled media and proscribed political thought, the class structure and family make-up. Demick has illuminated an area that is literally blacked out, both by lack of electricity and a locked-down media. Highly recommended.